asitoughttobemagazine

Ronnie Sirmans: “Booklife”

Posted on October 1, 2021 by asitoughttobemagazine

600212sl

Booklife

I turned the page of the old book
and was ready to read the end
of the chapter. That’s when I
noticed a pimpling of the pulp.
Booklice had moved in, bumping
up against passages, as foreign
as phrases I’d have to look up or
like marginalia by some other hand.
The tiny reduced-wing wildlife,
relegated to domesticated booklife,
was cream-colored like the pages
it had chosen for wordly habitation,
and I also couldn’t help but think
about how the page’s punctuation
—the bug wasn’t much bigger
than a comma but appeared shaped
more like an exclamation point—
had decided to move around, how
small symbols can shift meanings
of the sentences resting on the page.
For this interloper, this interjection
instinctively brushed off, I figured
it would take flight as the smallest
and plainest of angels wish to do.

About the Author: Ronnie Sirmans is an Atlanta print newspaper digital editor whose poems have appeared in Tar River Poetry, Deep South Magazine, Atlanta Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Fathom, and elsewhere.

More by Ronnie Sirmans:

Sloughing Words

The Word with the Schwa that’s Really a Short U

Remembering the Great Flood in the Frozen Food Aisle

Image Credit: Jan Davidsz de Hem “Still Life With Books and Violin” (1628) Public Domain.

Sushant Thapa: “Fragments”

Posted on September 29, 2021 by asitoughttobemagazine

Fragments

Stones and parched land

Hunger in lizards and crocodiles

That swallow little and more.

Mind and marathon of life.

Ants and their hills

Debts and bills

A closed shop with goods

That cannot open up for late night little

Cigarette cravings.

Highway and Hills,

The legs that cannot rest.

Youth is also a chair

Swinging in comfort.

The old age plans to sit

On the same chair

And breathe till death.

Certificates in frames hanging

Jobs in the newspaper vacancy rattling

Pebbles on the shoes that

Try to sleep for eternity.

Fragments of dream and its death,

Life and repeating survival.

About the Author: Sushant Thapa is a Nepalese poet from Biratnagar, Nepal who holds a Master’s degree in English Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi,India. His English poems are widely published across the globe. Some of his publications include Trouvaille Review, The Piker Press, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, New York Parrot, Atunis Poetry, Visible Magazine, Litehouse exophonic Magazine, Impspired, The Kathmandu Post, My Republica, EKL Review and Harbinger Asylum. Sushant is the author of the poetry collection “The Poetic Burden and Other Poems” published by Authorspress, New Delhi, India.

Image Credit: Carleton Watkins “Seal Rocks from the Point” (1866-1868) Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

Rocío Iglesias: “the Human Body is a Nightmare”

Posted on September 27, 2021 by asitoughttobemagazine

101031ab

Screenshot 2021-09-27 113811

About the Author: Rocío Iglesias is a queer Cuban-American poet and multidisciplinary artist with a law degree. Her work has appeared in various print and electronic publications and can most recently be found in Rejection Letters Lit Mag, Tilted House, and “Firmament” from Sublunary Editions. She divides her time between Miami and Minneapolis.

Image Credit: Hilma af Klint “The Large Figure Paintings, No. 5 Group 3” (1907) Public Domain.

Brian Rihlmann: “Heart Leaves Whispering”

Posted on September 24, 2021 by asitoughttobemagazine

521367ld

Heart Leaves Whispering

I could stare
straight at the sun
this morning
a harmless pink disc
in the sky
half as bright
as a full moon
the smoke smelled
sweet as apocalypse
the mountains fled coughing
over the horizon to hide
as the rose of Sharon
bloomed laughing
and the heart leaves
of the redbud
wilted weeping
whispering to me
in a language I wish
I didn’t understand

About the Author: Brian Rihlmann lives in Reno, Nevada. His work has appeared in many magazines, including Chiron Review, The Main Street Rag, The American Journal Of Poetry, and New York Quarterly. He has authored three collections of poetry, most recently “A Screaming Place,” (2021) by Cajun Mutt Press.

More By Brian Rihlmann:

The Whole Point of the Game

Unknown Soldiers

Certainty

Image Credit: Jan Stanislawski “Sun” 1905 Public Domain

Raul G. Moldez “When He Gets Bored”

Posted on September 20, 2021September 20, 2021 by asitoughttobemagazine

When He Gets Bored

he goes out of the house,
catching hermit crabs

at the back of a makeshift toilet
by the shore. Putting them,

one by one, inside an empty
Milkmaid can. He can hear them

moving. Keep on crawling.
Perhaps looking for a way

out. But each time they take steps
upward, they fall back. Fighting

for freedom or seeking for justice
is not easy. It may even cost life.

At noon, he would start crushing
their shells using stones as anvil

and hammer, killing all of them.
The crushed meat is collected

in a coconut shell. Used as bait
in the hook. And as the sun turns itself

into lemon in the west, he would cast
his fishing line into the waters.

About the Author: Raul G. Moldez writes from Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines. Author of two collections of poetry, A Day in a Poet’s Life and Other Poems and Mga Taho Gikan sa Akong Uniberso, his works have appeared in Philippines Free Press, Philippines Graphic, Philippine Panorama, Sunday Times Magazine, Crowns and Oranges, Kinaadman Journal, Bisaya, Sunstar Weekend, Homelife, Ani Literary Journal, Bituon, Dagmay, Tinubdan, Red River Review, The Literary Yard and Sentinel Literary Quarterly, among other publications.

Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Lemon Sunset” (2021)

Ruth Bavetta: “Signals”

Posted on September 17, 2021September 17, 2021 by asitoughttobemagazine

20210721231734_IMG_2077

Signals

This winter did not bring the hazy world
of wet, nor the susurrus of falling

beads of rain, yet the year proceeded.

Green hills faded to brown. The flowering
plum became a harbinger too soon.

Now we have the nameless season elbowing

into spring. Rudely thrusting back the rain
it beckons summer heat before its time,

pulls forth the breath of August

while April dissolves in bright and light,
calls for spark and ember, the errant

cigarette, the bit of broken glass,

tears up the pages of the calendar
to build an illicit and illegal fire

that will last to light our closing.

About the Author: Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod, American Poetry Review, Tar River Review, North American Review and many other journals and anthologies. Her books are Fugitive Pigments and Flour, Water, Salt (Futurecycle Press), Embers on the Stairs (Moon Tide Press), and No Longer at This Address (Aldrich Press). She has been a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee.

More By Ruth Bavetta:

Neon Boneyard

A Murder

Spell to Name the Unnameable

Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Utah Cliffs”(2021)

Frank C Modica: “Language of Love”

Posted on September 15, 2021 by asitoughttobemagazine

Language of Love

sunlight dusts the kitchen
like a whisper
the food-stained handwritten
index card rests
on a pile of week-old ads

the pasta machine
sits ready for the white flour,
water, and Crisco
mixed and measured
with familial fingers and eyes

after the final pass
through the hand-cranked machine
many hands take turns
with the rolling pin
to shape the dough
into soft rectangles
a plume of flour
covers everyone like snow

About the Author: Frank C Modica is a cancer survivor and retired teacher who taught children with special needs for over 34 years. When he isn’t writing he’s riding a bike or volunteering with various local agencies. His work is forthcoming or has appeared in Blue Mountain Review, Lemonspouting, and Fahmidan Journal. Frank’s first chapbook is forthcoming from Alabaster Leaves publishing.

Image Credit: Carol M. Highsmith “An Amishwoman rolls dough to make small fried pies inside the farmhouse at Yoder’s Amish Home, an authentic Amish farm that began accepting visitors in 1983 near Walnut Creek in central Ohio, along the “Amish Country Byway” Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Public Domain.

John Dorsey: “A Chicken Strip in the Shape of A Seahorse”

Posted on September 13, 2021 by asitoughttobemagazine

A Chicken Strip in the Shape of A Seahorse

sold by a high school girl
in a hairnet
who can’t swim

is proof
that god
once danced
underwater.

About the Author: John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw’s Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016) and Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Poetry, 2017),Your Daughter’s Country (Blue Horse Press, 2019), and Which Way to the River: Selected Poems 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize. He was the winner of the 2019 Terri Award given out at the Poetry Rendezvous. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

More By John Dorsey:

Anthony Bourdain Crosses the River of the Dead

Punk Rock at 45

Perpetual Motion

Image Credit: Digitally enhanced image from Arcana, or, The museum of natural history : London, Printed by George Smeeton for James Stratford,1811. Public Domain. Image Courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Tohm Bakelas: “mother’s day 2021”

Posted on September 9, 2021 by asitoughttobemagazine

mother’s day 2021

two calls made at
8:51am and 8:01pm
went unanswered

between those times
a heron watched
you both play with your
friends at a park
and then evening rains
absorbed your
joyful screams

masks of disappointment
worn to bed couldn’t
be taken off

“you guys tried, you called,
it’s not your fault she didn’t
pick up, you tried twice.”

another day x’ed
off the calendar

About the Author: Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, zines, and online publications. He has published 10 chapbooks. He runs Between Shadows Press.

Image Credit: Jacob Byerly “Portrait of a Woman” (1855) Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.